News Releases

Historian to Deliver Talk at Ithaca College on Thomas Jefferson's Daughter

ITHACA, NY—Historian Cynthia Kierner will present “Martha Jefferson Randolph: A Well-Behaved Woman Making History” at Ithaca College on Monday, April 22. Her talk, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 7 p.m. in Textor 101.

The daughter of the nation’s third president, Martha Jefferson Randolph was also the wife of the governor of Virginia and the mother of 12 children. She spoke five languages and had a famously “perfect temper.” Kierner will discuss how Randolph helped shape her father’s public image in Washington and beyond, and how she struggled as a debt-ridden plantation mistress in post-revolutionary Virginia.

A professor of history at George Mason University, Kierner is an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer and past president of the Southern Association for Women Historians. She is the author or editor of seven books, including “Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello: Her Life and Times,” The Contrast: Manners, Morals, and Authority in the Early American Republic” and “Scandal at Bizarre: Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson’s America.”

Kierner’s talk is part of the Marjorie Fortunoff Mayrock Lecture Series in the Department of History at Ithaca College. Begun in 1979, the series is funded by Elliot Mayrock ’73 in memory of his mother.